Previews

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory

Konami fetches a dungeon crawler from the depths of Japan. It's atmospheric, but it will need spit and polish to work in the United States.

Spiffy:

Dark and foreboding atmosphere.

Iffy:

The controls need a lot of work to make it worth playing.

Rengoku: The Tower of Purgatory, like Death Jr., is not actually an internal Konami product -- in fact, Hudson Soft recently released the game in Japan. Impressions from the Japanese launch gave the impression that it was a game with an interesting and compelling art style but some kinks in the gameplay. Hands-on time with the early translated version at Konami's Gamers' Day has confirmed this.

As the game begins, you're plopped down unceremoniously in a dark, foreboding, and vaguely technological chamber. Though the title Tower of Purgatory is extremely evocative, and the game's backstory concerns a twisted half-life trapped in a cyborg body, the salient fact is that it results in a maze of twisty corridors that are connected by sealed doors -- in short, a dungeon crawl. It superficially resembles many games in the genre, from Phantasy Star Online to .hack. You'll battle enemies, unlock doors, smash crates looking for items, and progress further and further up the tower.

That's not to say that Rengoku is without any twists. As anyone who's seen the intriguing concept art can attest, the characters in Rengoku are bizarre cyborgs with disturbing physiology -- the first promotional art released in Japan was a profile of a skull-like face with a gun embedded in its forehead. As you travel through the Tower of Purgatory, you'll improve your character and increase his powers by acquiring new upgrades. You start off weak -- much less powerful than the enemies you face -- and only over time will your character become the disturbing death-dealing creature the artwork suggests. Fortunately, enemies and crates often drop health power-ups that keep you fit enough to keep questing. That said, it appears the game is going to appeal to most to the serious-minded and dedicated gamer who can get behind the minutiae of its upgrade system and exploration.

The control scheme is somewhat unique: square and circle are left and right punch, respectively, and the triangle button is the weapon equipped in your head. Independent control for all weapons is interesting, but doesn't make a lot of difference in the early stages of the game: you'll only have weak physical attacks, which are identical. Locking onto enemies with the L button, you'll dodge and dash around them -- or, well, you'll try, but the control in this version is a little bit on the spastic side, which confirms complaints of gamers who plunked down the cash for the import version. Hopefully, Konami's got Hudson Soft working on tweaking them.